He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff on the Gulf Stream, and he had gone eighty-four days now without hurting anyone’s feelings. The fish had grown used to him, and he to them, in the way that rivals come to understand one another, except the old man did not see them as rivals. He saw them as souls.
The water was calm, the sun high. He let his line out gently, careful not to startle the fish below. In his youth, he would have cast with hubris. Now, he cast with emotional availability.
A tug. A great tug.
The marlin was mighty, its silver flank glistening beneath the waves. The old man knew he had hooked something special. He held the line firm but not too firm, lest he bruise the marlin’s sense of autonomy.
“Oh, sacred being,” the old man said, “I’m so sorry for assuming you’d want to engage with me today. Consent is key.”
The marlin tugged.
“Do you—” he grunted, the line pulling taut, “—do you feel comfortable with this dynamic?”
The marlin did not answer, but he thrashed, and the old man knew it was not merely a struggle of muscle but a dialogue of emotion.
“I want you to know,” the old man continued, “that if at any moment this feels like an unhealthy power imbalance, you need only to pull harder, and I will yield.”
The marlin pulled harder.
“Ah,” the old man said, nodding solemnly. “That is fair.”
He let out a little more slack. The marlin, sensing his willingness to negotiate, did not flee but circled back, perhaps intrigued.
“Your feelings are valid,” he told the marlin. “I honor your journey.”
The marlin thrashed.
“Understood,” the old man said. He wiped the sweat from his brow and sighed. It had been many days since he had eaten, but it had been even longer since he had imposed his privilege upon a fish.
The marlin dove, then surfaced again, watching him with its great, solemn eye.
“You are strong,” the old man said. “This is your truth. I’m just a vessel for your narrative.”
The marlin seemed to appreciate this.
They sat together, adrift, until evening. The old man, his hands flayed open by the line, each thread cutting deeper like the barbed wire of oppression, finally spoke again.
“I will release you,” he said. “Not to silence you, but to liberate us both from this colonial entanglement.”
And he did.
The marlin, rather than swimming away, lingered. Perhaps, the old man thought, it was grateful. Or perhaps it was considering whether it, too, had been unfair in assuming all men were threats.
The sea was very wide. The stars were coming out.
“You are a good fish,” the old man said. “Thank you for creating this safe space where we can both exist authentically.”
And for the first time, with his stomach hollow and his teeth chewing on his shirt sleeve, he pondered the nutritional value of validation.
